SCIENCE!! I spent the last week in California ostensibly attending the NECDC. Unfortunately, due to this summer's shutdown of the laboratory and (to a lesser extent) the DOE weapons complex, a lot of people weren't able to complete their talks. Many talks were cancelled and many more were a little low on actual content. For this reason, I found myself only wanting to see about four talks that were on the agenda. As a result, I spent a lot more time playing mini-golf than my boss would probably approve of.

I got to see Mikkel (first time in a year), Camille (first time in 2 years), and Evan (first time in 10 years!!). Mikkel and I went to a couple of nearby highpoints and enjoyed the view, then walked around the wharf district and had dinner at a nice Italian place. Though I live around big smartypantses now, it's nice to talk to someone who has a totally different perspective and is still up for mind-bending conversation topics. Talking to him gave me the distinct impression that this sort of intellectual chatter is somehow missing from my life as of late. My other outlet for this sort of thing, my roommate Robin, tends to be a little long-winded and it makes the experience wearying.

Speaking of new perspectives, Camille and Evan live on another planet. Seeing them and visiting Pixar reminded me of the fact that there is coolness outside of Los Alamos and Planet Dork. They rule. It's good to know that the "Dan the Janitor" story will never grow old, Evan. The visit to Pixar came at a weird time for Camille as this was the last week for her work on thier new movie, The Incredibles [which, btw, looks amazing and I highly recommend that everyone go see it even though I haven't seen it yet]. Camille and the rest of the incredibles team were clearly being driven pretty hard and in these last days they looked like they had been working 20 hour days for a year. Evan, on the other hand, is on a different film and showed no signs of crunch-time at all. Regardless, it was really refreshing talking to them both and hanging out in such a bizzarely cool environment as Pixar. If I had some sort of clue about movies or animation or whatever, I'd want to work at Pixar with them.

I guess the moral of this story is that my trip to California made me aware, for many reasons, of how isolated my life is in Los Alamos. I desperately need a job that includes more travel. I seem to remember having similar experiences on a lot of my major travels in the past. I always come away feeling... broader. (?) Does this travel make me look fat?

Anyway, here's some pictures from the trip: yay!